Iran, Saudi Arabia step up war of words over Shia cleric’s execution
Khamenei says Saudi Arabia leaders will face divine revenge, Riyadh hits back
TEHRAN: Iran’s top leader on Sunday warned Saudi Arabia of “divine revenge” over the execution of an opposition Shia cleric while Riyadh accused Tehran of supporting terrorism, escalating a war of words hours after protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran.
Saudi Arabia announced the execution of Sheikh Nimr alnimr on Saturday along with 46 others, including three other Shia dissidents and a number of al Qaeda militants. It was largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom in three and a half decades.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the execution in a statement on his website, saying alnimr “neither invited people to take up arms nor hatched covert plots. The only thing he did was public criticism.” Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saudi Arabia’s “medieval act of savagery” in executing the cleric would lead to the “downfall” of the country’s monarchy.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said that by condemning the execution, Iran had “revealed its true face represented in support for terrorism.”
The statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, accused Tehran of “blind sectarianism” and said “by its defense of terrorist acts” Iran is a “partner in their crimes in the entire region.” Al-nimr was convicted of terrorism charges but denied ever advocating violence.
Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran are locked in a bitter rivalry, and support opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen. Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of supporting “terrorism” in part because it backs Syrian rebel
groups, while Riyadh points to Iran’s support for the Lebanese Hezbollah and other Shia militant groups in the region.
In Tehran, the crowd gathered outside the Saudi embassy early on Sunday and chanted antisaudi slogans. Some protesters threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the embassy, setting off a fire in part of the building, said the country’s top police official, Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. He later said police had removed the protesters from the building and arrested some Demonstrations erupted across the West Asia on Sunday as Shia Muslims protested Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-nimr of them, adding that the situation had been “defused.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, while condemning Saudi Arabia’s execution of alnimr, also branded those who attacked the Saudi Embassy as “extremists.”
“It is unjustifiable,” he said in a statement. By 4 pm, some 400 protesters had gathered in front of the embassy despite a call by the government for them to protest at a square in central Tehran. A sign for the street had been changed to “Sheikh Nimr St.”